


One Day We Might Fit (As If We Were Always Meant To)

by Fweeble



Series: If Time Could Smooth Away the Edges (Until We Fit) [2]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Eating Disorders, Grey and Gray Morality, M/M, Tokyo Ghoul oneshot!universe, Unbeta'd, Unhealthy Relationships, canon typical levels of gore, canon typical levels of violence, the love between a ghoul and a human is not a simple thing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-04
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-02 20:49:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4073410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fweeble/pseuds/Fweeble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They aren’t Romeo and Juliet.</p><p>But, sometimes, Kaneki thinks they are destined for the same end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cupofbrouhaha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupofbrouhaha/gifts).



> For my dearest oniisan, [thekimchiburger](http://thekimchiburger.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.

They aren’t Romeo and Juliet.  
  
But, sometimes, Kaneki thinks they are destined for the same end.  
  
Hide is good. He has a good heart, a good soul, and Kaneki can see the tears forming, see the frayed edges where once there was a whole man, a masterpiece of beauty and wonder.  
  
It’s the little things that weather away the human, the little things that are somehow so large and insurmountable, great bulwarks of defiance that spring up between them, both sides teetering on the edge of nuclear detonation.  
  
Hide works for the CCG. _A glorified errand boy_ , the human says, teeth clenched during each argument, each emotional grapple for victory.  
  
“They hunt my kind,” Kaneki always hisses, teeth bared, hackles raised.  
  
“And you hunt mine,” the blond always replies, a darkness lurking behind liquid amber Kaneki has never seen before.  
  
It’s not that Hide hadn’t known –he’d always known, the human had said as much that night when everything had changed. But nothing has changed, not truly. Kaneki is still a ghoul, Hide is still human.  
  
But it’s different. The knowing what Kaneki was, what he ate, and facing the naked truth of it, the pickled hands in jars, the slabs of ribs in the refrigerator, the chunk of thigh Kaneki tears through with gusto.  
  
It’s different.  
  
And so they dance around the irritated elephant in the room as pieces of the roof falls around them, brittle and charred.  
  
“My dear,” a man on one of Hide’s many foreign CDs had crooned, “we’re slow dancing in a burning room.”  
  
_We are_ , Kaneki agrees, an unfamiliar tightness in his chest. He’s suffocating, they both are, but they can’t bear to part, to yield to the other, and eventually, one of them will fall.  
  
Maybe they will be burnt too completely to be recovered once the inevitable comes to pass, nothing but ash and tears.  
  
He holds a star in his hands, so brilliant and bright, and he is crushing it in his grasp, so terrified that it will fly away should his hold slacken. Stardust or nothing; Kaneki knows he will choose stardust each and every time. Something, anything, is better than nothing, than not having Hide at all.  
  
So he clutches his most cherished tight to his chest, waiting for him to flee, to return his place under the sun.  
  
At night, under the cover of darkness, Kaneki maps the familiar planes of the blond, tastes the sun lingering on salty-sweet skin. He latches onto the contours of fragile human hips, wants to bury himself in the other man. Wants to take Hide apart, create a space for himself, just under the ribs, curled around the heart. Maybe there, Kaneki can live in the light with him.  
  
He too wants to call the world beneath the open sky home.  
  
–  
  
“Playing with our food, are we?” Touka teases, grin sharp, like finely honed steel.  
  
He doesn’t say anything, but her words fester in the pit of his gut.  
  
_Playing with our food, are we?  
  
And you hunt mine._  
  
It makes looking Hide in the eye after their fights harder, makes the bitterness harsher, his words more barbed.  
  
Things don’t get better but Kaneki thinks, spiteful and vindictive, it won’t because it can’t. A ghoul and a human? There can only be one end.  
  
He nurtures his resentment, cultivates it like a hothouse plant, until the blond’s favorite sweatshirt doesn’t hang on him the way it should and the usual soft swell of his cheeks have become worryingly sunken.  
  
“Have you been eating?” he asks, fear taking root far deeper than any anger could have.  
  
“Of course,” Hide says brightly, cadence just a beat too slow. “Why?”  
  
_Because I haven’t seen you eat in weeks_ , Kaneki thinks, realization dawning. He sees everything in flashes –Hide sipping apple juice at the table in the morning, vegetables nibbled but unfinished, meat pushed around, untouched, on the dinner plate. “You’ve lost weight.”  
  
“Have I?” He sounds distracted and that cuts Kaneki deeper than any of the angry words they have thrown at each other at their most heated.  
  
Kaneki has always been prepared to lose Hide, but not to death.  
  
Not because of _this_.  
  
“I haven’t had much of an appetite lately.”  
  
_I see the faces of your victims_ , Kaneki hears in the hollow ring of Hide’s voice.  
  
“Well I’m going to buy you Big Girl tonight and you’re going to eat all of it,” he says with finality, hoping Hide can hear _‘I won’t lose you’_ in his words.  
  
“ _No_ ,” Hide protests, terror bleeding into his voice. “Kaneki, no. I – _I can’t_.” He gazes at Kaneki, desperation stealing his breath. “I can’t.”  
  
And Kaneki covers white knuckles with a steady hand, winds the other into tangled hair as warm dampness seeps through the fabric of his shirt.  
  
“It tastes like ash in my mouth,” Hide whispers softly into the ghoul’s shoulder. “I feel bile rise up in the back of my throat, and I just – _I can’t_. Not right now.”  
  
_Not anymore.  
_  
Stardust or nothing: Stardust, each and every time.  
  
–  
  
“You’re such a cat,” he says, rueful, eyes twinkling. “Get out of the basket, I need to fold the laundry.”  
  
“It smells like summer,” the ghoul murmurs peacefully, eyes closed, legs dangling over the edge of the hamper.  
  
“It’s winter. Do I have to grab a spray bottle of water to chase you out of there?”  
  
Kaneki reaches up, fingers twisting in a fistful of sweater, and yanks. “Join me,” he says. “It’s a nice afternoon.”  
  
The blond in his arm huffs into his chest, barely contained laughter sweet on his lips. “We’re going to break the basket, Kaneki. You owe me a new laundry basket.”  
  
_Not yet_ , Kaneki hums. _Not yet. It still smells like warm summer days, of sandalwood and sunshine. Of you._  
  
“Just enjoy the afternoon with me.”  
  
“I’m onto you, mister. You’re doing a cat thing and marking your territory.”  
  
_You go to such dangerous places, my sun. You go to places where I can’t. Let me do this. Let me do this._  
  
“I do enough nightly to ensure you smell like me, Hide. The laundry basket just happens to be the most comfortable place to doze in the apartment. And cuddle.”  
  
His human relaxes into him, squirms in his arms, bony elbow digging into his ribs. “Sorry,” the blond laughs, head tilting up to kiss the underside of the ghoul’s jaw, “sorry. An afternoon in the laundry basket it is. If it’s good enough for house cats it’s good enough for two grown men.”  
  
“I never claimed to be classy.”  
  
“Clearly this is the best date ever. I couldn’t ask for more.”  
  
–  
  
During the rare hours when Kaneki sits in their apartment, alone and waiting, he battles the demons that haunt him.  
  
One day, his human may not return to him.  
  
Maybe the man will wake up one day and, in the pale early morning light, blink slowly at the world he finds himself in. The darkness and deception Kaneki has cloaked his life in finally falling away to reveal the ghoul for what he is –a monster. And the human will see the truth as the last of his love is washed away, stray footprints of a mistaken path reclaimed by the ebb and flow of reality.  
  
Maybe it will be one of his kind, a ghoul clever and attentive enough to notice that the blond following him isn’t what he seems. Underneath the smell of ghoul that permeates his clothes lies a tantalizing scent, sweet and inviting. Human.  
  
Maybe it will be the CCG. They will break down the door, stolen weapons raised –ripped from the flesh of his brethren, taken and used to murder more, always more. Sometimes he can imagine it isn’t Hide who tells them where he lives, what he is. Sometimes Hide is crying, eyes red rimmed as he screams for them to stop.  
  
Maybe love isn’t enough.  
  
Maybe love isn’t enough and the stardust in his hands will be swept up by the winds.  
  
Maybe Hide will be too broken by the weight of _them_ to return.  
  
–  
  
“Your human is a good man,” a customer says one spring afternoon.  
  
“I’m sorry ma’am, I didn’t quite catch that,” he says, his smile jagged glass.  
  
“He is a very good man,” she repeats serenely, tapping her nose as her eyes meet his meaningfully, “He assisted my daughter and me despite the inherent peril in doing so.”  
  
“I think you have misunderstood something,” he begins, teeth flashing, jaws clenched. “I don’t understand what you think –”  
  
She contemplates the soft pitter patter of the drizzle beyond the window before turning back to him –gaze purposeful, determined. Kaneki thinks the woman doesn’t do anything without cause, without intent, “We had wanted to thank him but we lacked the means to do so. It’s…fortuitous that we have met at all. I’d like to extend an invitation to both of you –dinner, after both of your responsibilities have been tended to.”  
  
Once more, her eyes stray to the window and adds thoughtfully, “It looks as if this will all clear up shortly. The stars should be beautiful tonight.”  
  
But there are no stars, not in Tokyo, their delicate light drowned out by the city’s own, bright and overwhelming.  
  
“I’m afraid we have plans –”  
  
“I insist.”  
  
“If you insist,” Kaneki agrees drily, Yoshimura’s gaze hot on his back. “I’m afraid I cannot tarry any longer, ma’am, I have other customers to tend to.”  
  
“But of course,” she says. “Oh dear, I still haven’t introduced myself, have I? I am Fueguchi. Fueguchi Ryouko.” She extends her hand.  
  
Kaneki stares at it.  
  
Such delicate wrists –easily crushed.  
  
“A pleasure.”  
  
He serves nine more customers, waits forty more minutes, until Yoshimura’s gaze has regained some of its mildness, before he begs for his 15 minute break.  
  
Quietly, he ducks into the alley behind the cafe. His fingers are surprisingly steady as he types into his phone, heart a distant thrum behind the white noise in his ears.  
  
_Hide_ , he manages easily enough, _I’ll run late tonight. Don’t wait up for me._  
  
Numbly, he wonders how he will explain the bloodstains.  
  
It isn’t the right time for a food run.  
  
But that’s if he manages to make it home tonight.  
  
Dully, he considers warning Hide. _Run, Hide. You’ve been discovered._  
  
_Run._  
  
–  
  
Kaneki had always known all the skulking around Hide does would be the end of him.  
  
He just never knew it’d be the end of _him_.  
  
Love, he thinks, leads them all down strange roads.  
  
–  
  
She waits for him outside the coffee shop, the clean lines of her white trench coat a stark contrast against the dark sky. One perfectly manicured hand holds another, smaller, hand. Behind her is a young girl, flower pins neatly placed in her hair. The child peeks out from behind her mother, gaze filled with trepidation.  
  
“He couldn’t make it,” Kaneki says. “We could reschedule or…”  
  
Fueguchi smiles. “I didn’t expect him to.” She waves a hand down the street, “I parked the car a fair distance away. Tokyo, always so congested.”  
  
They walk to the car in silence.  
  
He wonders how terribly outnumbered he will be. He wonders, if things go pear shaped, as it inevitably will, if there will be time for him to leave a message for Hide.  
  
He should have told Hide he loved him, one more time.  
  
That he loved him, that he was sorry. For Hide to run.  
  
But hindsight is always twenty-twenty and foresight, blind.  
  
–  
  
She drives. The city lights sparkle in the distance, the stars twinkle above them.  
  
They wind up the side of a mountain. Kaneki thumbs his phone.  
  
She pulls over in the middle of the empty road beside a car. The two other ghouls exit the car, the young girl peering over the railing and into the dark foliage beneath them.  
  
It’d be a simple affair to push her over –no muss, no fuss.  
  
“I think I see one,” she says softly, “Maybe two.”  
  
Fueguchi and her daughter hold hands again, the woman sparing a glance at Kaneki before they both jump.  
  
_Follow._  
  
The implicit order rankles but he had made the decision to see this through.  
  
For Hide.  
  
He types in ‘run,’ thumb hovering over ‘send’ before slipping his phone back into his pocket.  
  
He descends the mountain, kakugan flared, kagune poised.  
  
What he finds is not the ambush he expected.  
  
A couple lay broken on the earth, hands clasped tightly together, limbs in disarray, marrionettes with their strings cut. The girl closes the the man’s eyes as her mother makes a silent prayer for them.  
  
“Do you think you can help us bring them back up the mountain?” Fueguchi asks after a moment. “You can take the car, we have spare plates in the trunk.”  
  
“Is this how Hide helped you,” Kaneki asks, pieces slotting into place, forming a completely different picture than he had feared. “He helped you drag dead humans back up a mountain?”  
  
The girl speaks for the first time, earnest and beseeching. “He showed us this place. He knew… He knew what we were.”  
  
Fueguchi huffs, the man thrown over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry. “He had seen us scavenging. One night, he approached us. ‘I need you to trust me,’ he said as if we could trust a human who tried to masquerade as one of our own. ‘There’s a place where you can find fresh meat and you won’t have to hurt anyone. It’ll be better for your daughter too if she didn’t eat meat that was half rancid already.’ He had a duffel bag –‘I promise, I have no weapons, just…things we’ll need,’ he insisted –and lead us up this mountain.  
  
“He said many people come here when they decide life has become too much. ‘It’s better than letting them go to waste,’ he said. A human. ‘Share this place with others like you.’”  
  
The wonder is clear in her voice, the wry bewilderment coloring its edges. The same bewilderment that fills him.  
  
“He works for the CCG, you know.”  
  
He tips off the Doves.  
  
“We know,” Fueguchi says mildly. They have reached the cars and she efficiently searches the bodies for a car key. She tosses it to Kaneki as she walks over to her own car. “We followed him for days. I’m sure he knew. We avoided this place for two months… but when Hinami fell ill after a particularly… ripe meal, I knew I had to chance it. I came alone at first. But after three months…”  
  
She pulls a duffel bag out of the trunk, pauses, unsure.  
  
“But after three months, I remembered what he said to me that night in the alley. ‘I fell in love with a ghoul.’ It was so laughable, then. Such a ridiculous claim I had never heard before. But three months later, I knew. He wouldn’t betray us to the CCG. He never planned to.  
  
“And then today,” she stops before the other car, pulls a new license plate from the duffel.  
  
“Today I smelled the ghoul I smelled on him that day. Not clothes pulled off a dead ghoul, but the scent of the ghoul lover he claimed to have.”  
  
Kaneki helps her replace the existing plate. “And why did you bring me here? Not enough hands?”  
  
Fueguchi smiles, eyes kind. “Because from the moment you met me your hackles were raised. You never would have believed me unless you saw it for yourself.”  
  
The bodies are piled into Fueguchi’s plastic-lined trunk, Hinami carefully covering them in more plastic before strapping them down.  
  
“Because,” she continues when Kaneki is about to climb into the other car –a stranger’s car, the car of two deceased lovers bundled into the trunk of another car, “he is a very good man who showed us another way. He gave us an option we never knew we had.  
  
“An option you should have, too.”  
  
“What do you mean,” he replies, tense.  
  
Her hand cups his cheek, her eyes steel when she says, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man look so pained when he spoke of love. If you love him too, you shouldn’t let him suffer so. Not when it is unneeded.”  
  
He had been right –nothing Fueguchi Ryouko does is without purpose.  
  
–

“I’m home,” Kaneki calls, toeing off his shoes. “I bought some oden for you.”

Hide is curled up on the sofa, pliant when Kaneki rearranges him, pulling the blond up to a sitting position. “I already ate,” he yawns, squinting up at the ghoul. “It’s…” he checks his phone, “Nearly one am.”

“You haven’t been getting enough protein,” Kaneki rummages through the fridge, pulls out a packet of liver, and moves over to the couch. “You’re going to end up anemic again. At least eat the egg and tofu. There’s also some shiitake in there.”  
  
Hide nibbles on a fried tofu, grumbles about fussy boyfriends, instinctively leaning into the ghoul once he is seated.  
  
Kaneki doesn’t mention Fueguchi.  
  
There will be a time for the discussion one day, he thinks tiredly, but not tonight. Tonight, he needs to reassure himself that his human is alive. In his arms and alive, safe.  
  
–  
  
Before Hide, his apartment was a sanctuary.  
  
Kaneki would drop his keys into the bowl on the shoe cupboard, collapse onto the nearest sturdy surface, grateful for the peaceful quiet. There was no Touka, whipping the CCG up into a frenzy with her excessive binging, no Tsukiyama badgering him, no doves to hide from. In this tiny piece of the world, Kaneki was as free as he can be.  
  
He can’t imagine returning home to such deafening quiet now. Can’t fathom unlocking his door without the chords of whatever the blond was listening to that day filtering through. The idea of crossing the threshold and knowing that Hide wasn’t there, would never again turn to him, “Welcome home,” falling from his lips as if it was the most natural thing in the world.  
  
Today, he hears what seems to be accordions.  
  
“What are you listening to today?” He asks after he manages to unlock the door. “I’m home.” He adds as an afterthought.  
  
“The soundtrack to Amelie.” Hide is in the process of pickling the bits that are in danger of going rotten before Kaneki gets to them at the end of the month. He wipes his hands on his apron, smile widening, “It’s a fantastic movie. You’ve watched it before, haven’t you?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Ugh, all you do is read,” Hide complains. “Luckily for you I’m a kind and benevolent soul who owns it on DVD. I am perfectly willing to sacrifice my highly sought after personal time to watch it with you. I even made snacks.”  
  
–

  
Kaneki drops the bag onto the kitchen table, sees the way Hide always flinches at the squelch it makes after the ghoul comes home from a hunt.  
  
A hunt, Hide calls it, because it’s easier for him to process that way.  
  
Ghouls have a right to live, too. It’s just nature taking its course.  
  
Hide tries –the human tries so very hard to be understanding. But it’s the little things that give him away, the shadows that hide behind his eyes even as he laughs.  
  
He threw away his people. It is never more obvious than the determined line of the blond’s mouth when he helps Kaneki strip flesh from bone, separate what will be frozen, pickled, preserved, dried.  
  
Hide looks resigned as he makes his way to the kitchen. It’s in the slightest furrow between his brows, the wrong tilt to the curve of his smile.  
  
“Why didn’t you tell me,” the ghoul asks.  
  
The blond’s face smooths into a mask of innocence, smile bright and unassuming as he rummages through their cupboards for plastic gloves. “About what? Is it about the CDs from the other day? I didn’t think you’d notice another one or three…”  
  
“About Fueguchi,” Kaneki sighs. “Why didn’t you tell me about Fueguchi and the suicide victims.”  
  
Hide purses his lips. “It’s not my place to bring it up.”  
  
Kaneki slams his hand down on the table. It splinters. Hide’s eyes narrow, good humor gone. “What do you mean it’s not your place! You risked your life approaching ghouls, exacerbated it further by bringing them to a remote location, and you didn’t think to tell me. I had to… I had to find out from some stranger.”  
  
“Are we really going to get into this now? With some dead stranger chopped into bite-sized pieces on what’s left of our kitchen table?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Hide sighs, tossing the gloves onto the kitchen counter. “That decision is yours to make, not mine. I’m not going to pressure you into it.”  
  
“And you’re perfectly okay with me ‘hunting’ once a month,” Kaneki demands, frustration growing. “You don’t flinch every time I come home afterwards. Once a month, you don’t lock yourself in the bathroom after helping me prepare a body. Do you think I can’t hear you? Do you think I can’t smell it? Do you think I won’t notice as you continue to get thinner and thinner, no matter how many sessions you have with a nutritionist?”  
  
“All you had to do was talk to me,” Hide whispers, cheeks flushed, knuckles white. “All you had to do was sit down and talk with me,” he continues, voice rising with every word. “All you had to do was look me in the eye and say, ‘Hide, we need a solution for this. Let’s figure something out together.’ I would’ve told you everything. I would have told you about the suicide hot spots I found, about the forensic countermeasures that could be used to cover your tracks –I would have. But you never gave any indication of wanting such a life.  
  
“In the end, you have never given any indication that humans mean anything more to you than food.”  
  
“As if you’re any better! Do those people not deserve a funeral? As far as their families know they just up and disappeared. They’ll never have any closure.”  
  
“And what alternatives do you have?” Hide stares down at his hands. “They wanted to die and there are so many people who don’t. Who don’t want to die or hurt anyone. I told Fueguchi to drive the cars to the beach, to leave the cars there if they didn’t need them. To leave their shoes by the sea. I want the families to have closure if they can but…” His breath hitches. “I’m trying to do the right thing.”  
  
_Are you?_  
  
“I love you,” Kaneki says, heart frostbitten by the chill in the blond’s unspoken accusation, “I love you.”  
  
Amber eyes bore into his.  
  
“And love can cure all ills, erase all troubles,” the blond laughs, bitter and broken. “Because love is the magic that fixes everything that is broken and wrong. Of course.”  
  
For the first time, Kaneki can see all the fine hairline cracks in Hide, how far and deep they are.  
  
_Stardust_ , he reminds himself, _stardust._  
  
Even as he knows stardust isn’t worth destroying the man he loves, he reminds himself: Stardust is better than nothing at all.  
  
It’s too late to change things now.  
  
–  
  
The end of them is on the horizon, Kaneki can taste it, bitter, on Hide’s lips.

“Why do you love me,” he murmurs into familiar warmth, tender skin, “I’m a monster.”

“You’re human,” the blond says, fingers playing with the ends of Kaneki’s hair.

“I’m a ghoul.”

“You’re a ghoul and you’re a human. The two aren’t as mutually exclusive as you might think.” The edges of his lips turn up, the facsimile of the smiles that adorned Hide’s face months ago. Back when the human still lived in the sun, before Kaneki had pulled him into the shadows, claws sinking deep beneath skin. “I fell in love with the way you made coffee. The earnest way you prepared it, the unabashed thrill in your smile when I complimented you. I fell in love with the determination that dwells in you, your unwillingness to be deterred. I fell in love with the honest way you chase after what you want, your unwillingness to surrender

“I fell in love with Kaneki Ken, a man who despite all his faults, is as strong as he is fragile. And maybe he eats people, but that doesn’t make him any less beautiful.”  
  
It should settle the fear clawing at him, the honesty of the words, the truth in his eyes. But the tired lilt in his voice, the resignation that shines just as strongly as the truth in the amber eyes that had first caused Kaneki to stumble –they speak louder than any comfort the words lend.  
  
And the fear solidifies into acceptance, deep in his gut.  
  
They’re both tired; so very tired.

  
–  
  
The fight, _The_ Fight, is inevitable, always was.  
  
Kaneki regrets it before the entirety of it leaves his mouth, “You say you love me, but how can you love a monster? How can you say you love me, a ghoul, as you work with those who conspire to have us all killed? How can you turn your eyes away from their genocide. And now you’re going to help them. Go –join their crusade, kill all the innocent ghouls struggling to survive. Just don’t come back.”  
  
The human stands stock still for three heartbeats, just long enough for Kaneki to begin an apology when he says, “Okay.”  
  
One word, and it’s over.  
  
Okay.  
  
He walks out their front door and doesn’t return.  
  
Kaneki watches the news the next night, cries as endless bodies are carried out of the wreckage of an abandoned steel mill. The pretty news announcer lists the names of the identified CCG officers lost in the raid, a list that ends with “unfortunately many of the recovered have been too ravaged to be identified at this point and there are still many more beneath the mill.”  
  
This is how he loses his greatest love.  
  
By chasing him into the arms of destruction.  
  
–  
  
“He’s gone, huh,” Touka quips. “Your pet.”  
  
She pets his head –two quick pats before she sashays out of the employee side door. “Don’t sulk too long. You’re no fun when you’re cranky.”  
  
Kaneki lacks the motivation to be bitter.  
  
There is just…  
  
Guilt.  
  
Anguish.  
  
–  
  
  
Touka calls most nights.  
  
“Three months is too long to mourn,” she says tartly. “Find another pet already.”  
  
She scoffs at his clothes, picks at his sleeves every day, clucking her tongue. “Black is so boring. You need to wear some colors. It brings some life to your stick-in-the-mud face.”  
  
Kaneki is tired, unbelievably so.  
  
“Leave me alone,” he bellows when someone knocks on his door. No doubt Touka again, offering her assistance in choosing a new wardrobe for him. “Goddammit, Touka, I’ve told you a thousand times before, I don’t need any clo–”  
  
He strides over to the door, intending to rip it off its hinges and beat her with it when he sees a shock of blond hair. Too long, unkempt and tangled, but familiar.  
  
“Hide.”  
  
“Hi,” the blond offers, scratching the back of his head with his free hand.  
  
Kaneki crushes the human to his chest. The last remnants of a healing cut mars the left side of his neck, a cast envelops his right arm, and it looks as if the blond is favoring his left leg, but – _he’s alive_. Beautifully, gloriously, alive.  
  
“You’re not dead.”  
  
“I’m not dead,” he says. “There was a month bed ridden and then another in recovery, but no, not dead.”  
  
Everything feels unreal, so he clutches Hide tighter, whispers a litany of apologies. Wants to breathe ‘I love you’ into familiar lips, to prostrate himself before this man and beg until he is forgiven.  
  
“Also not working for the CCG anymore,” Hide chirps. “They wanted to train me to be an investigator? Could you imagine that? I can’t fight my way out of a wet paper bag and they want me to fight ghouls who can lift me with their pinky.”  
  
Kaneki stares at him.  
  
“I’m an investigative journalist now. Or will be once I’m out of my cast? I’m hired on the condition I’m able to start typing within the next four months. And…” The blond pauses, exasperation clearly etched on his face, “This isn’t want I wanted to say. A month confined to a bed with nothing but your thoughts, a man starts reevaluating his priorities. And I…”  
  
“I have things to say too,” Kaneki says, desperate. He needs. Needs to tell Hide he is sorry, that the words he threw like knives was just childish anger, that he will do anything to convince Hide to forgive him, to stay.

“I stopped hunting,” he says, because everything is too big, too overwhelming and in the end he has always been a coward. Too afraid to risk losing what he had, he instead watched the man he claimed to love fall to pieces. “You made me a better person.”

He hesitates, fears disgust, or worse, hate, when he asks, “Is it okay for me to still love you?”

Tears spring in the pools of amber Kaneki first fell in love with and an apology is already on his tongue when the blond surges forward, shaking hand clutching the ghoul’s face as insistent lips press against his.

“If you had let me finish, you gigantic fool,” Hide accuses wetly, the smile that Kaneki had missed so dearly sitting so plainly on his face. “You’d know.

"I’m yours.”  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song is [Slow Dancing in a Burning Room](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfFi4Q7ueA8) by John Mayer and Amelie is indeed a fantastic movie (although a bit nsfw, to be truthful).


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hide struggles to heal after the traumatic events of the failed CCG raid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is also for the [the hidekane support group contest](http://hidekanesupportgroup.tumblr.com/post/119762741704/thank-you-so-much-for-1-9k-followers-weve). The song referenced is ["Things We Lost In the Fire" by Bastille](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYRqIAuY9IQ).

_“Listen to me, Hideyoshi. Reconsider this. You will lose things, and what is lost is never easily recovered.”  
  
“I was never as innocent as you think I am, Mado-san.  
  
“Please understand, I only want to do the right thing.”_  
  
–  
  
Hide wakes to the mournful chords of an almost-forgotten song.  
  
“Things we lost…in the fire…” he mumbles, dark images flickering through his sluggish mind. “What a morbid song…”  
  
“It’s your iPod,” a familiar voice admonishes from beside his bed. It hurts to crane his neck, his body one long line of white-hot fire. He thinks he will turn to ash, crumble, only to be scattered and lost by a stray wind. “It was part of your personal effects. Who brings music with them to a raid?”  
  
“It wasn’t…like I planned…it.”  
  
His iPod had been in his pocket when he stormed out on Kaneki.  
  
This is all he has now: The clothes he had on his back, an iPod, headphones, a wallet, and keys to a door he can no longer cross.  
  
He wants to mourn the end of his relationship, to mourn something that was so vast and precious, without words, like the endless wonder of space. This impossible, irreplaceable thing that dogged his waking hours as fervently as it haunted his dreams.  
  
Instead, there is a hollowness deep beneath his ribs, the chill of guilt, shame.  
  
_Broken, like marionettes with snapped strings, fallen birds with plucked wings. Shattered glass across stone._  
  
He had wanted to do the right thing.  
  
“Was it the right thing?” he begs, “Was it? Akira-kun…”  
  
_Is Mado-san alive?  
_  
“There is no right in this world, Hideyoshi.”  
  
He tastes the salt of his tears and the bitterness of her broken heart.  
  
–  
  
There are more dead than alive. That is all he hears, that is all Akira will say, that is all anyone truly knows.  
  
Three days later and they are still sifting through wreckage.  
  
Missing, presumed dead. That is the only thing whispered.  
  
Missing, presumed dead.  
  
–  
  
He doesn’t question how Fueguchi knows or how she even gained permission to visit, just croaks out a feeble greeting at her entourage.  
  
“Your connections are truly impressive, Fueguchi-san,” he says after she pours him water. “Thank you, by the way. For the water. And for visiting.”  
  
“You are quite welcome, Nagachika-san,” she demures.  
  
Hinami busies herself arranging freshly cut flowers in a vase on the bedside table. The man, tall and impossibly broad with lovely muscled arms, tries to make himself as tiny as possible on the chair next to Fueguchi. He chews on his lip as he sends worried glances towards the flowers, large hands fluttering in his lap.  
  
“The flowers are lovely, thank you. Hinami-chan, was it? How did you know I loved gerberas?”  
  
Her smile is radiant. The restless man stills, relief washing over his face.  
  
_How cute_ , Hide thinks.  
  
Cute.  
  
They could tear him to bits, all three of them. Even small, delicate Hinami, with her earnest smile and clear eyes –she could sink teeth into his heart, laugh in delight at the burst of blood in her mouth, the sluggish trickle of red down her face and hands. She could pluck his eyes from its sockets, pop them into her mouth like juicy grapes, smile as humor drips down her chin. With her bell-like giggles, she can mock him as she scrambles his insides, tenderly and sweetly.  
  
She could. They all could.  
  
Hide has seen it, has seen it all, has heard it –the terrified screams, the pleas for mercy, for life. The last, defiant breaths of those he holds dear, of the only family he has ever known.  
  
_Cute_ , he thinks, _Cute the way bears and wolves are._  
  
Dangerous, deadly. Killers.  
  
–  
  
After he picks at his lunch and asks for juice instead on the fourth day, the nurses have had enough.  
  
“You have to eat, Nagachika-san, in order to heal.” The head nurse eyes the fragile line of his collarbones, the sharp jut of his wrists, “It is clear you hadn’t been eating properly before you were admitted. Take this time to not only recuperate but to remedy your… poor eating habits.”  
  
“I think the pain meds are making me nauseous,” Hide lies smoothly. He smiles in hopes of softening the severe line of her mouth. “Can I please have some orange juice instead?”  
  
She takes his tray and sighs, frustration clouding her features.  
  
“I think it’d be more effective to schedule an appointment with a psychiatrist,” she says tartly. “There is no shame in seeing one, Nagachika-san. Especially after what you’ve seen.”  
  
She leaves him alone in the white room with its white bedsheets and white curtains.  
  
He looks down at his hands, bile sour and familiar in the back of his throat, haunted by the white. By the red that taints it, steadily, consuming it all until there is nothing left but crimson.  
  
He hides from the white with shaking, stained hands. But even with eyes clenched shut, he sees it.  
  
Broken, a crumpled puppet crowned with red spider lilies.  
  
_Mado-san…_  
  
–  
  
Akira visits.  
  
There is a long line down her left cheek, ugly and red, dark stitches holding its edges together. She was one of the lucky ones, she says, as if she isn’t held together with string and tape, more mottled bruises and open wounds than whole and hale. Another week of physical therapy and she can leave, join the other surviving investigators in rallying the remains of the CCG.  
  
They lost a battle, not the war, she says with determination and steel. Their biggest threat now is fear. They need to be decisive, to reassure the frightened, to gather those who are still clear headed and regroup.  
  
She sits, tall and straight, in the chair by his bed, eyes unwavering as they meet his.  
  
He wishes she had her conviction, her certainty.  
  
Mado Akira is not broken.  
  
Hide is not sure he isn’t.  
  
–  
  
Once, he used to dream of grand places, of fabulous adventures. He climbed impossible mountains, discovered unimaginable wonders, flew carelessly across gorgeous lands. It was freedom, undiluted excitement and beauty.  
  
He doesn’t remember his dreams now, just the terror, the frantic staccato of his heart, the searing pain in his arm.  
  
After the third IV, the nurses start bringing sedatives with his medication every night.  
  
–  
  
“I have been told that  you are refusing psychiatric help,” Fueguchi says.  
  
She is alone, arms crossed, fingers tapping against the side of her arm as she frowns at him. He wonders what she sees. Dark circles, fragile bones, skin the color of bone? Does she see someone haunted or the dead masquerading as the living? He feels hollow and too full, feels as if if she were to cut him open, she’d find stuffing and string; he doesn’t feel real, not anymore.  
  
“What am I supposed to tell them,” he asks. Because he doesn’t understand anything anymore, not the world, not himself. “I can’t tell them…”  
  
He searches her face, yearns for answers but instead gets her kind eyes, her sympathetic smile.  
  
How is he supposed to say that, more than the horrors that he has seen, more than the shattered pieces of his world, what aches tortures him the most is the empty ache beneath his ribs where Kaneki should be. And that’s the terrible truth of it all, isn’t it? Despite everything, all that he has lost, that his loved ones have lost, he is preoccupied with something as inconsequential as a doomed love.  
  
What does that say about him?  
  
“If you will not talk to a stranger, will you at least talk to me?”  
  
He studies her, the gentle face that has grown so familiar over the time he has spent confined to a strange bed.  
  
“Will you listen to a story?” he asks instead.  
  
“Of course,” she says, pouring a fresh glass of water for him.  
  
“Once,” he begins, “there was a couple. They had a baby, a little boy. He was ill and, worried, they took him to the neighborhood clinic after nightfall when the husband had finished work. On the way home, they encountered someone. A ghoul.”  
  
And it’s easy talking about strangers he never knew, these ghosts of a past he doesn’t remember or care for, so he continues.  
  
“They were killed, of course, and as that ghoul feasted, he did not notice the Doves that descended upon him. One investigator, who was a father himself, found the tiny baby clutched tight in the mother’s cold arms. ‘What a poor child,’ the kind man thought as he rescued the baby from death. And maybe it was because it was him who found the child, but that man could not help but feel responsible for that child and so he visited the child frequently as he grew up in the CCG’s orphanage. He visited often, worried that the child would feel lonely and adrift in a world without roots, no family to his name.  
  
“But he worried needlessly. The boy grew up with more family than he could count on both hands. He had brothers and sisters, had grown to see the man as the closest thing to a father he had. And he was content, happy, with the life he had. He did not know his parents so he did not mourn them, he had suffered no loss he could recall, and he sympathized with the children who came to the orphanage with nightmares, tainted with fear and rage.”  
  
He thinks of Amon and starting awake in the darkness, woken by the older boy’s screams. He remembers nights he spent squeezed into a bed with the other boy, spinning ridiculous tales until they both fell back asleep, a charm against the nightmares. They never came back those nights.  
  
“And then one day, the man suffered a great loss: His wife was taken by ghouls. His little girl was inconsolable and, as the boy stood by her side unable to do anything to soothe the wound in her heart, he thought he might finally understand the loss every child who arrived at the orphanage carried. For the first time, he understood the feelings of helplessness and impotence as he was unable to help the girl who he held so dearly, a sister in all ways but blood.”  
  
He glances at Fueguchi, sees the muscles jump in her jaw, the wetness of her eyes. She understands, he thinks. The delicate ring on her left hand glitters prettily under the hospital lights. Hide knows –Fueguchi is intimately acquainted with such loss.  
  
“When the boy was old enough, the CCG tested him to see if he was qualified to enter their training program. However,” Hide laughs, remembers the long-forgotten aches deep in his joints. Remembers the flood of relief that consumed him that day, “that boy was pathetically inept in all things martial and so he failed to enter their program. The man, worried about the boy’s fragile ego, shared a secret with him: He had prayed desperately that the boy wouldn’t pursue such a life. He had been heartbroken the day his daughter had chased him and the phantom of his wife down their dark, troubled path. What the man did not know, however, was that the boy never had any intention of following his steps and becoming an investigator. ‘Just as well,’ the boy had thought, ‘I don’t have the drive or determination anyways.’  
  
“But the boy had grown up with stories of ghouls and their evil his entire life and he wondered: ‘Why are they like this?’ So he decided to find out the why.  
  
“It started as a game. He’d pick a person and he’d follow them. He’d stick close to the shadows, climb ledges and walls. Maybe they were ghouls, maybe they weren’t, but he’d find out.  
  
“One day, he chose a mother and her son. He didn’t think there was anything particularly strange about them, the mother didn’t wear a jacket with a high collar, the son didn’t look particularly demonic, but the boy remembered that he had seen them a few other times in town. He remembered how they boy never begged for sweets at the cafe counter like every other child, how even in the park, late in the afternoon, when the sun was on the verge of setting, the mother would have a cup of coffee. And maybe adults were like that, but the boy thought it was strange, and if he was wrong, so what?”  
  
Hide can see it, can see the realization dawning in Fueguchi’s eyes. He offers a smile and she returns it, small and fragile.  
  
“It turns out he was right,” Hide has to stop, can feel his heart beating against the cage of his ribs. Fueguchi can hear it, he knows she can. “He lost them in the crowd and for a moment, he was confused. He backtracked twice and, on the third try, he figured if he couldn’t find them this time, he’d give up for the day. He turned down an alley and…”  
  
Fueguchi leans forward, holds his hand in hers and he clings that warmth desperately. “He saw them. The mother prostrate before an investigator, tears streaming down her face, her son clutched tightly to her chest. Spare him, she begged. Spare her little boy. The investigator laughed,” Hide breathe, feels his throat closing up. Fueguchi squeezes his hand, grounds him, as he rides the waves of terror, “And the boy found the son’s head at his feet, the limp body yards and yards away. He heard the mother’s anguished screech in his dreams for months.  
  
“When the boy asked the investigator why he had killed the son,” Hide whispers, “The man had said, ‘Monsters are monsters. They are never children.’”  
  
Fueguchi looks murderous and Hide wonders if he should stop, but she attempts a smile and she says, “I am still listening if you wish to continue.”  
  
Relief and gratitude floods him and he thinks he will drown in the emotions. When he had started, he had not realized how cathartic this would be and now that he has come this far he feels compelled to finish. He feels as if he is soaring high above the sea and that if he stopped now, the magic that was keeping him afloat would end and he’d plummet into the icy depths below.  
  
“For many nights after that, the boy was unable to sleep, he was haunted by one question: Did his mother also beg for his life so desperately? Did she also hold him so tightly to her chest? Did she too curl around him, a living shield to impede the encroachment of death?  
  
“It was hard to think of ghouls as monsters after that. The boy’s friend had a rosary he never left behind, and that friend had touched the rosary with a troubled look on his face when he told the boy: ‘Don’t be fooled. They are good at pretending they aren’t. But that doesn’t change what they are.’  
  
“The boy continued on as always. He spent most evenings skulking about where he shouldn’t and the kind investigator who had saved him was no fool. So one day, the man took the boy aside and said, ‘I know you have talent, maybe even a gift. But what you’re doing is dangerous. Even with our training we risk our lives. You have none. You are not just risking your life, but the lives of civilians. You do not know how ghouls will react to being followed.’”  
  
Hide thinks Fueguchi agrees with Mado, can see her restrain herself from nodding in agreement. He wants to laugh at this woman, a ghoul, who seems to have taken him under her wing. He wonders if the faint warmth he feels is what it feels like to have a mother.  
  
“But the boy had to know. He continued to follow people he thought were suspicious and, as time passed, he picked up tricks. He stole clothes off dead ghouls and wore them to mask his scent. He taught himself how to use surveillance devices he bought with his pocket money he saved over weeks and months.  
  
“Time passed. He graduated high school and started university. He worked part time at the CCG as an errand boy. He moved out of the orphanage and into an apartment with another boy and split rent. And things continued as they always had until…”  
  
This part is a secret he had never shared. This, he had kept hidden and close to his chest. He did not know how to share this, if he wanted to.  
  
“He had found two ghouls in a cafe. ‘They need lessons in faking it,’ he had thought. He followed them for a few days and he had decided he should tell the CCG but first, he had wanted to figure out which of them was the binge eater that had been ravaging the area. By chance, he had picked the same ghoul as an investigator. The boy remembered that investigator; he was the one who had killed that mother and son all those years ago.  
  
“But he didn’t kill this ghoul. Instead, he was killed. The boy was terrified, unable to move from his hiding place, and when he finally stumbled out, long after the two ghouls from the cafe had abandoned the body, he thought this was it. He had his answer. Ghouls are monsters. Yet, when other investigators arrived and questioned him, he lied.  
  
“He didn’t know what happened, he said. He had seen someone, eyes covered by a hat, jacket collar turned up high, run past him in a hurry and he thought he saw blood. He thought the area was suspicious and he went to check and he had found the investigator there…”  
  
Hide wets his lips nervously. What would happen if someone opened the door and heard what he was saying. What if Akira opened the door, or anyone from the CCG. What would his family think of his lie, of his betrayal? He continues, voice low, “The problem was that the boy had heard what that ghoul said, had listened to him bare himself to the investigator, the truth in his voice raw and painful: He wanted to live a normal life. And for the first time the boy wondered what it was like to live as a ghoul, to not have a secret, but to live one.  
  
“He now had more questions than he had started and he thought the ghoul could answer it. So for weeks and weeks and months and months, he went to the cafe every Friday and had coffee. He watched the ghoul while he worked, talked to him when he was free… and one day, after many, many coffees had been drunk, the boy realized he had a problem: He was in love with the ghoul.”  
  
What was he supposed to say now, he wondered. What was there to say.  
  
“He fell in love with a ghoul. And then, many months later, he tried to do the right thing,” Hide digs the fingers of his free hand into well-starched sheets. He’s shaking and he can’t stop it, can’t do much of anything but try to breathe. Fueguchi looks alarmed by his side. She hands him water and murmurs softly as she rubs his back. She thinks he should stop, he can see it in the the hesitation in her eyes, but he knows he can’t stop now, so he pushes away the cup she offers and forces the words out, tripping over them with his hurry. “He tried to do the right thing and the man who was like a father to him… He sacrificed himself to protect the boy. And so did a dear friend. He watched as people dear to him did atrocious things and as monsters did even worse.”  
  
He thinks of the frightened ghouls that hadn’t fought back. He hears the cries of a baby as her mother runs, ukaku quinque firing, of the arc of her body as she falls, wet and red against the floor.  
  
He sees the ugly twist of a ghoul’s smile as he licks blood off his kagune. Feels the haunting laughter of another ghoul pierce through him as she bites off a fallen investigator’s lips, the thrill in her voice rendering him useless with fear.  
  
Everywhere, there are corpses. The fallen, the dead.  
  
He’s tired of losing pieces of himself as his family falls, one by one, in a crusade he doesn’t believe in.  
  
But these are all things he doesn’t know how to voice, so instead he tells Fueguchi:  
  
“The boy woke up in a hospital and wished he never did. He witnessed the true darkness that the investigator he held so dear did not want him to see. He woke up hating himself because all he wanted to do was to run away, to wish away everything. To wake up in his ghoul lover’s arms, but he had lost even that because of pride, chasing righteousness that didn’t exist.”  
  
Hide looks Fueguchi in the eye when he admits, “I don’t think the boy survived the raid.”  
  
–  
  
Physical therapy is a pain, but that’s probably written in the therapist’s job description – purveyor of pain and misery for those struggling to achieve the ability to complete basic day-to-day activities.  
  
When he manages to walk more than twenty steps without falling flat on his face, the therapist tells him the nurses have promised a reward if he eats his lunch.  
  
It’s ridiculous that the nurses have resorted to bribery in order to get him to eat, but he’s weak and he thinks he needs something good, a reason to continue on, so he tries his best. He finishes the small salad and the tofu, manages several bites of the rice and half the miso soup before he has to stop. “Vegetarian,” he lies to the nurse when she eyes his untouched fish and she raises a disbelieving eyebrow at his half-drained miso. It’s the most he’s eaten since he arrived and he can already feel his stomach turn in protest but he’s so desperate he’s willing to suffer it if the reward is good news.  
  
He can’t think of anything he wants more than that.  
  
Maybe there was a miracle.  
  
Despite the beeping monitors and the IVs and the stitches and plaster that kept blood and brain in and not out, maybe Mado overcame the impossible and woke up.  
  
Maybe Akira’s vigil by his bedside will end. Maybe she will no longer be alone in the world.  
  
Instead, the nurse helps him into a wheelchair and guides him down the hallway, into the elevator, and to another room on another floor.  
  
It’s not Mado behind the door but it’s just as great a surprise.  
  
“You’re alive,” and for the second time since he woke up in this strange foreign world, he cries. “ _You’re alive_.”  
  
Amon grunts from his bed, wincing, and Hide is sure he is causing the man pain, he should let go, but he allows himself an extra moment to reassure himself that Amon is real. Warm, solid, and alive.  
  
“What are you, Frankenstein’s monster?” he whispers, wiping away tears.  
  
The investigator is an assortment of stitches and purple-green bruises decorated with plaster.  
  
“It’s what happens when the ceiling collapses on you,” Amon says and Hide is impressed by how lucid he is despite the myriad of painkillers that are surely pumping through his system.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says after the rush of relief has happiness has passed, leaving behind the guilt that has been his constant companion. “I’m sorry, if I hadn’t gone…”  
  
_(Kagune, sharp and bloody, coming closer, closer…)_  
  
If he hadn’t been there, maybe things would have been different.  
  
“You shouldn’t have been there. We shouldn’t have asked you to come.”  
  
_(“You have good instincts, Nagachika. We’ll need it for a raid this big. You’ll be safe in the command center,” Marude says.)_  
  
“I would’ve come anyways, I would’ve,” he chokes on the bitter hubris of his actions, “You’re family. I would do anything.”  
  
_(The ghoul considers him intently, hand a vice on his jaw as she moves his face this way and that. “Tiny bird, how far you’ve flown. Too far, too far, your broken wings can’t carry you back.”)_  
  
He buries his face in his hands.  
  
“I just never realized that was true for you and Mado-san too.”  
  
_(Broken, a marionette with its strings cut. Mado-san, Mado-san, Mado-san.)_  
  
  
–  
  
It surprises him, no, it perplexes him that Fueguchi continues to visit him.  
  
“Banjou is free,” she says one day as Hinami arranges daffodils in the vase by his bed. “He’s a much better choice.”  
  
“For what?” Confused, he looks at the other man who only flushes and fidgets in his seat. “What’s she talking about? What are you talking about?”  
  
“A better choice for a boyfriend,” she says simply.  
  
Hide feels his face heat up and he’s about to say something, anything, because this is a discussion he can’t have, not now. Deep in his core, he still misses Kaneki. He thinks he craves the ghoul the way an addict does for a fix, he can feel it constantly, a low thrum deep in his soul. Missing Kaneki is a nearly tangible thing.  
  
“However,” she begins before he can change the subject with a bad joke or perhaps even a comment on the abysmal weather, “I can also see that you’re not going to consider it. I just want you to know that Banjou is available, should you reconsider.”  
  
Banjou looks as if he wishes he could vibrate through the floor, he looks more embarrassed than Hide feels.  
  
“That would be nice,” Hinami says dreamily, “It’d be like Hide-san was family.”  
  
“Yes,” Fueguchi agrees serenely, “Although you are already family, Hideyoshi-san.”  
  
It’s instinct that makes him say, “Hide is fine, Ryouko-san.”  
  
“Hide-san, then.”  
  
He isn’t sure he wants it, isn’t even sure he should accept it, but he knows he needs it.  
  
–  
  
The hospital doesn’t want to release him, but Ryouko convinces them, and once again Hide marvels at the connections she has. It’s laughable that it still surprises him. She had only agreed to help if he agreed to her terms, an offer she would have only extended if she had the power to see it through.  
  
Which is how he spends a month living in the back of her clinic, sleeping on the spare bed she keeps in the employee-only room tucked in the back for Banjou to sleep on when he pulls all-nighters studying in the clinic. She buys him the things he doesn’t have: a toothbrush, toiletries, clothes. She brings takeout for him and apologises because although her apartment has a kitchen, she doesn’t think Hide should be doing something as strenuous as cooking.  
  
Hide wonders how his life came to be that something as simple as waiting for water to boil could be considered an arduous task for him.  
  
“Eat everything in that box,” Ryouko warns him, “I made sure it has all the nutrients you need.”  
  
Hide supposes it is a kindness that she avoids fish and meat, aware that their texture does more than roil his stomach, but he looks at the takeout she handed him and despairs.  
  
“How about we negotiate,” he says instead. “I’ll eat half of this and drink a cup of juice I know you’ve been keeping in the employee fridge for me.”  
  
“I am a doctor and I know what is best for you,” Ryouko says mildly. “At least finish all the vegetables and the eggs. I’ll forgive you if you leave the noodles behind.”  
  
Banjou pours a cup of coffee for Ryouko, and for the umpteenth time, Hide considers how Banjou is more secretary than nurse. The man offers Hide a cup and he shakes his head. Coffee just makes him miss Kaneki.  
  
“Deal,” he says as he snaps the disposable chopsticks apart, “So make sure to tell Hinami-chan I’ve been a good boy today. I can’t handle her sad woebegone eyes when you tell her I’m being a bad patient.”  
  
–  
  
“I quit,” Hide says. Banjou is sitting on a bench in a nearby park, waiting for him. He thinks that’s what gives him the strength to do this. “I quit,” he repeats, determination solidifying.  
  
Marude steeples his fingers, considers him with calculating eyes before saying, “If it’s because of the raid, I can assure you, not all assignments will be like this. In fact, with some training, it will be infinitely safer for you and the operations will run much more smoothly.” Hide frowns and the man continues, “Don’t let one setback cloud your judgement, Nagachika. Even Investigator Second-Class Mado realizes this.”  
  
An unexpected heat rushes through him when Marude mentions Akira. “Don’t bring her into this,” he growls, “It has nothing to do with the raid.”  
  
It’s a lie and Marude can tell, Hide knows, but it’s not as much as a lie as the man thinks it is.  
  
It’s not the raid itself. It haunts him, asleep or awake, but that’s not what ails him. It’s how the raid left him –unsure of the world around him, of his place in it, of himself. He’s lost and more than a little bit broken. All he knows is that he can’t do what he used to do, he _can’t_. He’s done being the blind man feeling his way through life.  
  
“I quit, Marude-san,” he reiterates. “Full stop. I quit.”  
  
–  
  
He calls Hinami on Banjou’s cell.  
  
“I did it,” he tells her and delights in her squeal, her whole-hearted congratulations.  
  
He still feels like a stranger, an imposter wearing his own skin, but he thinks he’s finding pieces of himself as the dust settles.  
  
–  
  
“I’m doing well, I promise,” Hide tells Akira over the phone. She has taken to fussing like a duck to water, something that amazes him as much as it amuses him. He thinks he understands; in a way, he is all she has left. “I’m going to see Amon today. They think he will be well enough to be released soon.”  
  
“You should have yourself checked while you’re there,” she says crisply. “When will you be getting your cast off again?”  
  
“Sometime soon,” he hedges, because admitting his recovery is being delayed due to his eating habits is nothing short of signing his death warrant. “Not all of us can have superhuman Investigator-healing, Akira-kun.”  
  
“I’m going to visit Sunday,” she informs him. “I want to meet this friend you say is taking care of you.”  
  
Hide thinks of the meat Ryouko has stashed in the clinic, the meat she gives to the ghouls who visit in search for a way to live peacefully, just like she does.  
  
He apologizes to Ryouko, Hinami, and Banjou when he says, “How about we go out for dinner instead.”  
  
–  
  
“I think I could be a writer,” he tells Banjou over coffee and a smoothie one Sunday afternoon. “I could be a fantastic writer.”  
  
“Of course,” Banjou says earnestly, because he is made of spun sugar and sunlight, and sometimes Hide wishes he could have fallen in love with him instead. Things would be easier, he thinks, if he had fallen in love with someone as sweet and true as Banjou. “You’d be a great writer, Hide-san!”   
  
“I’ve been thinking about job searching, y’know? I think I should try to be an investigative journalist. Put my skills to good use, don’t you think?”  
  
–  
  
She hates him, Hide thinks, perhaps nearly as much as she hates the CCG, so it surprises him when she sits him down one day and tells him to go see Kaneki.  
  
“It’s been three months since you’ve last seen him,” she says lightly but Hide knows her well enough now to hear the sour note to her voice. She is not pleased. “It’s clear it’s not puppy love or infatuation. For whatever reason, you cannot get over that man. So you should go see him. Air out whatever it is between you two.”  
  
Hide cannot look at her when he asks, “But what if I don’t want to. ‘Air it out,’ I mean.”  
  
He doesn’t know if he can see Kaneki again, not when he left the way he did, a bundle of self-righteous anger and fury. Not when the first thing he did after he left their apartment was throw away his testament, his heart he had meant to leave behind for Kaneki. Not when his pride had left him the way he is. How can he go to Kaneki, pieces of a whole person?  
  
“What if I don’t want it to end,” he admits finally, because he had known Kaneki hadn’t meant what he said, that the ghoul had been ready to take back what he had said. But everything had seemed too much at the time. It was too much of a mess, too much of them was destroyed to be salvaged, he had thought. He hadn’t understood, then. He doesn’t think he could have while he was still whole.  
  
Going back means that things will end.  
  
He can’t imagine Kaneki wants him now, not after the way he had strutted off like a glorified peacock, so sure of himself and the world around him.  
  
How can Kaneki want him now, this ugly, shattered thing that he has become.  
  
“All things must end,” Ryouko soothes him gently. “And if he is a big enough fool to let you go then he is not worthy of your time or attention.”  
  
“You’re just hoping I’ll date Banjou instead,” he jokes wetly and she humors him, gentle fingers combing through his hair.  
  
–  
  
He listens to his iPod during the nights when the nightmares are particularly gruesome. Somehow, he is drawn to the song Akira had played when he’d regained consciousness, and he finds himself playing it most nights.  
  
“I was the match and you were the rock, maybe we started this fire. We sat apart and watched as all we had burned on the pyre,” the man mourns. “You said we were born with nothing and we sure as hell have nothing now.”  
  
“Flames –they licked the walls tenderly as they turned to dust all that I adore,” Hide repeats softly. He considers the foreign words on his tongue, contemplates them as he sits in the dark, the moon a delicate sliver against the night sky.  
  
He wonders if the fire he had left behind was still burning, if maybe it wasn’t too late to salvage what was left. Ryouko’s words ring in his mind and he knows what he should do.  
  
“I don’t want it all to turn to dust.”  
  
–  
  
“I’m yours,” Hide says, because it’s true. He thinks part of the reason why he’s so broken is because he left the biggest part of him behind that day, and the horrors of the next day had merely ground what was left to dust.  
  
_I’m yours_ , he breathes into Kaneki’s lips when the ghoul closes the distance again, _I’m yours, I’m yours, I’m yours._  
  
And it frightens him how true it is, how much of him is wrapped up in this man. So much of him belongs to Kaneki Ken and it terrifies him.  
  
–  
  
Some nights, he goes shopping for dinner with Kaneki.  
  
The ghoul fusses and sticks a ridiculous amount of tofu and eggs into the basket no matter how many times Hide says he also needs folates and other mineral goodies. It’s always protein, protein, protein. There’s more to combating anemia than protein, but the ghoul seems convinced that Hide is perpetually one gram of protein away from collapsing.  
  
It’s something normal, and it’s grounding.  
  
They wait in line as Kaneki complains about Ryouko, because Hide is still living out of the back of her clinic and has a made a mess of the employee-only room with boxes of things he had taken from the apartment he and Kaneki shared.  
  
One day, he will move back in. Soon, he thinks, he can feel it in his bones, but he’s not ready, not just yet. Because he feels as fragile as their relationship is, and every moment he spends with Kaneki is a moment spent in fear as much as in love.  
  
Time away from Kaneki has given him perspective, and while Hide may be fragmented, perhaps beyond repair, what they had, what he shared with Kaneki, was on the verge of self-destructing, had been even before he had left. All it takes is another wrong move and perhaps this too will be beyond salvaging.  
  
Hide doesn’t think he can handle another loss like that.  
  
“What are you thinking?” Kaneki asks as they walk to Ryouko’s clinic, because the ghoul is a gentleman who accompanies him home every time they go out. It touches him, perhaps more than it should, considering how poorly Kaneki and Ryouko think of each other.  
  
“I’m pretty lucky,” he says, tentatively linking his fingers with Kaneki’s.  
  
  
     
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The [vitreous humor](http://image.wistatutor.com/content/feed/u1006/eye%20image.jpg) is part of the eye, in case I confused you during the description of Hinami's eyeball-munching.
> 
> PTSD reference [here](http://kasscityhelps.tumblr.com/post/36514948181/how-to-write-a-character-with-ptsd-post-traumatic).
> 
> Character notes for the series can be found [here](http://fweeble.tumblr.com/post/121518868703/basic-character-facts-for-the-oneshot-universe). (Not spoiler free.)
> 
> I wrote about 80% of it during the wee hours of 1 am until 4 am. Please forgive all the gross typos you may see.
> 
> Posting on the same day as tumblr post to celebrate marriage equality in the US! <3


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